


An Ache That Feels Like You

by keicros_caramel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bad Decisions, Crying, Developing Friendships, Kageyama Tobio is Bad at Feelings, Light Angst, Loneliness, M/M, Rejection, Reminiscing, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keicros_caramel/pseuds/keicros_caramel
Summary: What once was a boring lunch break became an emotional mess.>> Tsukishima got stood up by Yamaguchi on a lunch date, and Kageyama had nowhere else to go.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio & Tsukishima Kei, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 1
Kudos: 64





	An Ache That Feels Like You

**Author's Note:**

> School started. I met my classmates online and the first thing I thought is, “Oh man. These people will be annoying.” Whether it’s for the better or for worse, I don’t know yet. How’s school for y’all?

The shadows of the trees filtered the sunrays, littering the small walkway between the school buildings with the shadows of the leaves and branches. A peaceful lunch rendezvous remains on point, pinned in the biggest corkboard in Tsukishima's head to make sure he doesn't forgetーa thought bubbling on the surface of his subconscious everytime he zones out and forgets why he's at the back of the school playing with random dead leaves. 

The school clock ticked 12:11. 

He made a mental note to adjust his watch; it seemed he was a few minutes too early for Yamaguchi's tutor session with Yachi to be over. Nearing fifteen minutes late, footsteps finally approached from the side based on the cracking of the fallen leaves and twigs. He perked his head up only to meet a surprised set of blue eyes. 

Kageyama stood dumbfoundedly, pausing in his tracks. Carrying nothing but a milk box from what Tsukishima guessed was from the vending machine, he almost assumed the king was simply on his way back. 

Almost. 

“King,” he greeted. 

“Tsukishima.” 

Almost, as the first year classrooms are literally on the other direction. In mutual realization of this fact, they both straightened and raised their eyebrows at each other. 

“What are you doing here?” The two boys asked in unison, freezing in mutual annoyance at the chorus. 

Tsukishima went first— craning his neck and gesturing vaguely to his side, where a wrapped set of bento remained untouched. Kageyama only took one glance and blinked.

“Yamaguchi?” he asked as he went closer, taking a seat at the opposite end of the small block a few feet away. At the mention of his bestfriend, Tsukishima battled the unsolicited eyeroll and only nodded. 

“Yeah, Yamaguchi,” he replied in a dead voice, “What about you? Does the king have someone to confess to or...?”

Kageyama scoffed loudly, stabbing a straw angrily on his milk box. With the king's silence and the pitiful lunch sitting next to him, Tsukishima decided to hold it on his hands and spare the food from waste. He held his hands together for a moment and grabbed the chopsticks to eat. 

“You're going to eat all of that?” Kageyama's quiet voice asked. He kept his eyes down. 

“I'm not giving you any.” 

Tsukishima swallowed the rice with a dry gulp. He grabbed his water bottle and helped it wash down.

“Of course not! I don’t want it!” the setter defended, followed by a loud slurp.

Then why did you ask? Tsukishima can feel Kageyama's glance study him in curiosity, and he felt like he knew what he was about to ask. It was too late when he opened his mouth to stop him, as Kageyama already answered.

“...You're not waiting for him?”

At the question, Tsukishima closed the cap on his bottle and hummed in thought. Head split on giving the leaves on the ground some attention and thinking of what to answer, he drummed his fingers on the ground next to him and gave what seemed to be a cross between a nod and a shrug. “I don't think he'll come today. He's busy.”

What a nice answer, he told himself in utter disappointment and annoyance. In his defense, at least that wasn't a lie. 

Beside him, Kageyama buried his hands on his slacks' pockets and kept his head leaning back to the wall, slurping the milk nice and slow albeit deep in thought. Hating the idea that he spoke last, Tsukishima snapped his fingers twice and snapped Kageyama out of his daze. 

“Care to tell me why you're here?” he asked, shoving more rice balls in his mouth to get the food's demise over with. In growing curiosity and concern that the setter, who almost punched him the first time they met, decided to stay instead of walking away like a normal person, he brought himself out to ask. “You do realize that you can drink milk somewhere else?”

Kageyama took a deep breath and pulled his lips away from the straw, staring at the sky ahead. 

“Is this the first time you got stood up?”

“Excuse me, first time I got what?” Good thing he swallowed before he could choke. “How in the actual world do you mean?”

Kageyama turned to him, glancing from his face to the half-eaten food on his lap as he slowly brought his milk box back to his lips. “Yamaguchi isn't here, right?”

Tsukishima almost forgot how some people aren't the college prep classmates he had, or the functional seniors and senpais he had. He shoved the remaining food in his mouth in a small compromise for actually holding a conversation with the setter. 

“Tch, no,” he finally answered after a few minutes of chewing, leaving the word stupid or genius out. “Not the first time.”

He reached for the water bottle and kept his eyes at the same sky Kageyama stared at. The clouds were fluffy and cotton-like, he just realized. It was the first time he actually looked upwards that day. The silence was broken ironically when he heard Kageyama stop drinking.

“Hey, Tsukishima. Does it ever bother you that your friends have friends?”

He lowered his water bottle in concern and rolled his eyes to Kageyama, who remained stoic as he slurps milk. 

“Uh, what's wrong with you today? If you want to ask someone for an existential social therapy thing, go bother Hinata or something. You two think on the same wavelength anyway.”

Tsukishima was wrapping the bento boxes back into their fabric when the slurping stopped. 

“Hinata's with his friends,” Kageyama answered, voice rough and quiet. “He's probably texting the Nekoma setter right now, if not that.”

Pausing, Tsukishima placed the bento boxes back next to him and narrowed his eyes at the setter. Connecting one dot to the other, he slowly widened his eyes in realization, falling in a gasp. 

“Are you...” Tsukishima gasped. 

“Yeah, it's annoying and lonely—“

“...jealous?” They both paused. “Oh. That”

He sat back down. _If that isn't interesting,_ he thought. 

“Go on, Kags.” He guessed it wouldn't be too bad. 

* * *

_It was kinda bad,_ he thought as he relished the creamy taste on his tongue, wishing to the heavens it was enough to keep him full. 

“ _Oh! It's the scary guy! What's he doing here?”_

_“Uhm, hey.”_

_“Oh my god, he's talking to me!”_

_“You're classmates with Hinata Shoyo, right?”_

_“Y-yes? Why?”_

_“Where is he?”_

He heard chuckles, glanced once, and finally left. So much for making an effort for friends. 

He once heard of the saying about how it was darker in a room after a light goes out in comparison to a room with no light at all. Every single time he found himself standing idly in the middle of a crowd, towering and sticking out like a sore thumb not just on his height but also his solitary, he kept thinking of his room's light turning off. 

Every single time he found himself mentally preparing for noise only to realize there wouldn't be any one, he kept thinking of how dark it was when the light first goes out. It was always inevitable to feel the sudden suffocation when it first becomes pitch black, but it was always the relief of his eyes getting used to it that gets him out every time. He will be fine, he kept telling himself. _I feel lonely, but I will be fine. This is nothing but a gentle reminder of my lonely life._

However, there is still that fear that it won't be the worst it could get. 

Maybe, a few years from now, he will find himself still typing in the same contacts on a new phone, hoping that Kunimi, Oikawa, Kindaichi... _and Hinata_...haven't changed numbers then. 

Maybe, a few years from now, he will move houses but keep his room the same it had been, just to tell himself it was the same room he used to have "friends" and his grandfather over. 

Maybe, a few years from now, his sister would have guests over and for once he wouldn't be too shy to actually say hi instead of holing in his room wishing he was immediately liked without doing anything. 

Thankfully, he grew from that. 

God knows how much he wanted to.

Tsukishima let out a breathy laugh, sounding not to mock but in surprise. “Wow, the King does have feelings.”

Oh, he sure hoped that message relays through. 

“Shut up, Tsukishima.”

The blonde quiets down. 

Sometimes Kageyama wonders how he had survived his entire life for that long when he's so destructive to everyone and everything. The least he could do is to not force the people around him to be loyal and stick by his side like willing casualties, even if he's trying to be better. Especially if he's trying to be better. Those people will receive the harder side of the process alongside his. It was considering there are people who actually wanted to. God, if he met himself, he was sure he wouldn't pick himself too. 

“Hey, Kageyama.”

“Oh?” He raised a brow at the absence of the regal nickname. The clouds rolled overhead. 

“What is it that you like about Hinata?” Tsukishima asked, voice crossed between genuine curiosity and ridicule at the absurdity. “Is it the fact that when you need him, he wasn't there?”

“Boke...” He wished he had a milk to choke on. Instead, his chest ached at the violent verbal attack he didn't mentally prepare for. The blocker's question was something he pondered about before, albeit only better worded than anything he could ever come up with, but the same idea nonetheless. 

“I know you're du--stupid, but this level of stupidity is dangerous. Take it from me,” Tsukishima continued, playing with the knot he tied on the bento box. “So yeah, King. Answer it for me will you? What do you like about that tangerine?”

“You beanpole...” he can only grumble in misery. 

“Is it that he lets you down? Is it that he can't communicate well? Is it--“

“No, okay. Stop,” Kageyama answered, frowning at the sky he was just smiling at a moment ago. “No matter what you tell me, I don't think I can hate him. I don't think I ever will.”

“That's...the most stupid thing I've ever heard from your mouth,” Tsukishima said, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief. 

Ignoring the remark he knew by heart, Kageyama continued, complete with bizarre hand gestures to keep his thought process grounded. “I...I like him because when he lets me down, he makes up for it. I like him because he doesn't say things as they are, and when he does, it makes the words hit harder, you know?”

“Oh my god, wow...!” Tsukishima laughed, realizing his own words were being shoved back into his ears. It was a laugh of pity and mutual pain, but something equally mocking nonetheless. Kageyama can't help but let the corner of his lips curve into a smile, knowing that at least someone finally understands. Laughing and subtly making fun of him, yes, but understands.

“And...and I also like him because he's shorter than me, and just as clueless as me, and spikes my tosses with everything he got,” Kageyama said, mentally cursing the sky that gave him his satisfying misery. He's going to end up alone someday, he knew it, but what an honor it was to meet Hinata before it all. He took a deep breath in and sighed, calming the both of them from their misery-induced high. “But you know, that's not even all.”

“Be my guest,” Tsukishima grinned, covering his eyes as his own chest ached. “Tell me something funnier.”

Meeting Tsukishima right in the eyes, a smirk placed on his lips compensating for the cracks in his heart (god, he's proud of the pain), he continued. “I don't like him because of all the times I needed him and he wasn't there. I like him for all the times he was actually there even if I didn't need him.”

A pause, some bird chirps, before stomach-clutching laughter. 

“Oh boy, you're so going to die!” Tsukishima said, wiping a tear from his eyes. “You're so fucked.”

“I know!” He cried, finally breaking into sobs. Laughing and crying alongside the last person he wanted to spend time with, he continued. “I know.”

Tsukishima straightened and glanced at Kageyama, letting it all sink down as the bottom line of it all. He watched as Kageyama slowly slid down to lie on his back with an arm over his eyes, shoulders trembling and legs hanging over the edge of the platform. With all laughter and sarcasm out the window, Tsukishima only stared at his figure in pity.

“You do know I'm not going to go pat your back or something, right?” he whispered, seriously this time, to which Kageyama only laughed for a second and shook his head. “We're not friends, Kageyama.”

“I know,” he said, ignoring the pain the truth had given him. If it's phrased like that, maybe it would hurt less. “Just stop talking for a while.”

Oh, who was he kidding. It would hurt more. 

* * *

_Ha. As if he'll listen._

“We're not the same, no matter what you think was going on between Yamaguchi and I,” he said when Kageyama drifted back into his headspace, staring at the ground with glassy eyes. 

A few seconds passed in just the sound of the trees rustling only to be broken by the sound of the bell ringing, signalling the end of the strange lunch break they had. Kageyama pulled himself back up, wiping his face on his shirt and hoping the tear stains wouldn't show on the black fabric.

“What are you going to do?” Tsukishima asked. For now, later, in the next few years, the context was left unsaid. Kageyama shrugged idly. 

“I'll find a thin wall to punch somewhere and maybe I'll feel better,” he answered. Tsukishima didn't bother deducing whether it was a joke or not. “I'll come to practice okay, don't worry.”

“Tch, of course you would.” The blonde finally stood up, grabbing the bento boxes and his water bottle. “Play like you're not broken.”

“Shut up.”

Tsukishima turned to finally walk away, only to pause after the first three steps. “So?”

“So what?” Kageyama asked, confused. 

“You're not going to beg me not to tell anyone?” At the silence, Tsukishima turned around and met Kageyama's reddish eyes, who looked at him in suspicion. 

“Uhm, well...are you going to?”

If he doesn't have his hands full, he would have had the hardest facepalm he'd ever given himself in his lifetime. Just when he thought the setter met his dumb quota already for one day... 

“What, you trust me now?” Tsukishima rolled his eyes. “All that emotional and personal—oh, and mental—work for the processing and investment in that monologue of yours and you trust me to actually keep that?”

It was a special kind of story, he had to admit. Not everyday he can see the one and only King of the Court crying on him, breaking because of his utter stupidity and his emotionally stunted way of living. It was in the middle ground of those stories you only tell your psychiatrist and the stories you shout on a semi-public karaoke bar. It was...personal. Intimate, but no homo. 

Oh, maybe a little. 

To see that his hunches were right—it was indeed Hinata—did make him feel better only for the sake of self-gratification and pride. But to see that it bothers Kageyama as much as a similar situation bothers him within, it's not surprising, but he had been suspecting this whole time. All the insults only boomeranged back to him; maybe he was also a stupid one for letting it get this awkward and...honestly, bad. 

“Yeah, well, I don't really care,” Kageyama shrugged, blowing his nose on a handkerchief. “I don't think people would believe it anyway.” 

There's nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires.

“Oh wow, the audacity--“

“Tsukki!!! You're here!”

The two of them froze at the familiar voice. Slowly turning his head to face the end of the narrow walkpath, two heads bobbed close as they ran near, one head clad with cool green hair and the other the brightest orange he had ever seen. 

Tsukishima and Kageyama remained frozen, but whispered the same thing under their breaths. 

_Shit_. 

“Oh! Kageyama!” Hinata beamed first upon seeing the setter, who flinched at the mention of his name. Kageyama immediately turned his face away, hopefully to sbrub the snot and the tears away before it was seen. Hinata paused just at the same time Yamaguchi thought of the same thing: “Wait, what are you two doing together?”

All eyes were on Tsukishima, as the one who remained calm. Hinata and Yamaguchi started exchanging looks between them. 

“He said he doesn't wanna come practice so I punched him,” he said swiftly in one breath. “I made his nose bleed, see?”

“Hey!” Kageyama was quick to retort, glaring at him. “It's snot, not blood!”

_Are you fucking kidding me?_

“Oh my god!” Hinata exclaimed, hands flying to cover his gasp of either shock or ridicule. Hinata went closer to the setter as Yamaguchi only cringed seeing Kageyama's sticky handkerchief. 

Tsukishima can only glare at the setter, hoping to whatever deity is up there to finalize that this is Kageyama Tobio's peak stupidity. I'm trying to save your ass from awkward explanation, you motherf-- 

“Yeah, I made him cry too, _see_?” he added past clenched teeth, widening his eyes to glare at Kageyama to pick up the lie. “Whatever. Report this and I'll hide all of your shoelaces later.”

“N-no! I'll shut up!” Hinata swore, turning to Kageyama with a cute glare. “So why won't you go to practice, Kageyama?! Why didn't you tell me?”

The questions continued as Tsukishima led the way out, closely followed by Yamaguchi who waved the two over to hurry back to their rooms. 

“Hey, Tsukki. I'm sorry I didn't show up. I was--“

“Yeah, I know,” he said, though he just didn't want to hear the excuse. “It's fine. I have Kageyama.”

It didn't sink to him until a few seconds later, while they were climbing the stairs back to the room. Heaven knows he would admit it out loud, but at least Kageyama was there. Else, god-forbid, he would be the one wiping snot and sucking concrete by then. 

He saw Kageyama and Hinata enter the other stairwell, opposite of theirs at the hallway. As they met eyes before they disappear to their doors, he gave him a small nod. It doesn't matter if the dense raven-haired setter even saw or understood; at least he thanked him. It was a message more to himself than anyone else:

_I'll see you next time, King. Be my guest again, let's see if we're still miserable._

“Tsukki?” Yamaguchi called from the door, peeking out at the hallways in curiosity. “What are you looking at?”

“Ah nothing,” he said, placing a hand on his best friend's shoulder. “Just someone who cries with his own ache.”

“Kageyama?” Yamaguchi tilted his head.

“Yeah, Kageyama.” Tsukishima laughed, sensing a tingling sense of dejavu. In an effort to keep it light, he forced a genuine-sounding smug chuckle and slipped into his desk. “He's in pain.”

_It was pain that feels like you._

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, luvluvs!


End file.
